Campaign Finance Reform Bill Dies

The Obama and Romney campaigns have been slugging away at each other this week about transparency and disclosure. And yet Tuesday, the Disclose Act, which would have allowed you to better know the people behind superpacs was smothered in the Senate by filibuster without earning a single Republican vote. Huffington Post reporter Dan Froomkin explains to Brooke what happened.

Now I disagree Dan Froomkin and I don't expect to be able to say anything to sway him or his fellow Republican-hating liberals. But I can say and irrefutably prove that he is in large part mistaken about Republicans. When he suggests that there is a "party line" (his words) about campaign finance disclosure, there isn't any party line. Famously, in ruling in favor of the Plaintiff in Citizens United, Justice Scalia indicated that he favored fewer campaign restricitions and allowed for much more campaign disclosure. Whereas Mitch McConnell points out that disclosure can be used by political opponents to intimidate political donors and chill speech. As was the case (quite rightly mentioned by Brooke) in NAACP v. Alabama.

All of which forced Dan Froomkin to suggest that some laws need to be in place to protect the powerless, not the powerful. Dan Froomkin actually offered that suggestion with a straight face and unless it was edited out (by... Brooke), Brooke Gladstone didn't even laugh.

The upshot being that we might need two different Constitutions; one for Dan Froomkin's "powerless", which would presumably include that multimillion-dollar 503(C) corporation known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and another one for the powerful, which would (before Citizens United) any small filmmaker who, through any corporation wished to promote an independent film on an election subject within 60 days of an election.

No mention of how the DISCLOSE Act favored union funding of electioneering finance over others? Perhaps that part too was edited out. By... Brooke.